5SOS one shots (boys x Reader)

13. Pain

Pain. That’s what Ashton’s feeling.

Emotional pain, yeah. But in the current moment, it’s more of a physical pain. Mostly because he’s a bloody idiot, but we’ll overlook that. Ashton, like the genius he thought he was, tried to stop Y/N from shutting the door in his face by sticking out his foot and pressing his hand against the door itself. Only, again – he’s an idiot – so he ended up tripping forward a bit and his hand got slammed between the door and the doorway, instead. He likes to think that it kind of but totally not really went his way because he’s in the house and Y/N’s in front of him right now, but he does have an injured hand so. (And he also may or may not have let out a very manly squeal/scream that probably costed him his dignity, if anyone else besides Y/N heard it.)

“That didn’t go as planned,” Ashton mumbles through a pained laugh, eyes transfixed on the girl before him as she gently massages ointment onto his hand since it’s starting to swell up. She’s got a roll of bandages on the table to which the chair he’s sat on belongs to and it’s going to be wrapped around his hand. But he doesn’t want that to happen too soon because that would mean that she’d start distancing herself away from him again. He doesn’t want that. He never wants that. “Are you going to talk to me now?” He asks quietly, using his uninjured hand to tilt her chin away from where she’s focused on tending to his hand.

“There’s nothing to say,” she mutters in reply, dropping her gaze back onto his hand.

“Y/N, please,” he begs. “Tell me what I’ve done wrong. I don’t know what I’ve done but I’m sorry for doing it, and I will do anything to make it better.” Because he really doesn’t know what he’s done wrong but suddenly her replies to his texts are short and then she’s ending the conversation, and she’s refused to meet up with him and then she just stopped responding to his texts and calls all together. Thus why Ashton had gone over, only to be in the current situation that he’s in.

“No, you won’t,” Y/N says through a forced laugh, shaking her head as she reaches for the bandage and starts wrapping it around his hand.

Ashton winces as the bandage is wrapped too tightly around his injured hand and Y/N glances up, an apologetic look in her eyes before it’s gone and she’s turning back to focusing on wrapping his hand up. “Yes, I will,” he insists, his tone stubborn – because that’s what he is. As stubborn as… something really fucking stubborn.

"You won’t,“ she repeats, "Because you already didn’t. I gave you a chance, but you didn’t do it.”

Ashton just looks at her then, and then he’s grinning and then he’s laughing like it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard. He’s toppled over, clutching at his stomach as he laughs and laughs, and Y/N’s just watching him with her arms crossed. She’d normally smile at the sound of his laugh, because his laugh was just so… nice. She’d always either smile or laugh along with him whenever he laughed; she couldn’t help herself. But now? Now she’s clenching her jaw and gnawing on her bottom lip and she’s hugging herself and repeating a mantra of ‘don’t show him how weak you are, don’t show him how weak you are' over and over in her head.

Till she finally can’t take it and she lets a single tear run down her cheek, shaking her head as she walks out of the kitchen. Only, she never makes it out of the kitchen, for a large hand’s wrapped around her wrist and tugging her back – the laughter previously echoing around the kitchen ceasing to confused and uneasy chuckles, till they’ve just stopped completely.

“Wait…” Ashton gasped, tugging at her wrist harder and turning her body around so that they’re facing each other, but she’s more focused on the floor than she is on his face. “You’re being serious?”

Y/N doesn’t say anything in response. There are plenty of things she wants to say – Ashton can practically hear the screaming thoughts in her head – but she says none of them, only opting to stay silent and stare intently at a tiny ant crawling on the floor, carrying a breadcrumb far too big for its body to handle.

“You're jealous? That’s what this is about?” He asks incredulously and there’s humour in his tone and Y/N really wants to smack the humour out of him but she won’t, so again: she’s silent. “Y/N, baby, there’s nothing to be jealous about.”

“Well, why are you upset and mad and annoyed?” Ashton asks quietly, “Tell me. Because whatever it is, I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”

“I already told you, Ashton," she huffs. "I’m mad because you didn’t even bother trying to deny the fucking rumours. If anything, you're encouraging it. There are fucking articles in magazines, telling their readers that Gashton is so cute and that they’re definitely together, Gashton this and Gashton that and it already sounds like a bloody STD, and what hurts the most is that you don’t even deny it. You don’t even bother trying to tell them that you’re not dating her.”

“If I respond to every rumour then that just fuels them to start even more!” He throws his hands up in exasperation. “I figured they’d let the rumours go after a couple of weeks!”

“Well, they didn’t, now did they?” She drawls out sarcastically, scoffing at the end of her sentence.

“Babe, you can't be serious,” Ashton gapes at her.

She gapes at him, “And why can't I be serious about this?”

“Because they’re just dumb rumours cooked up by people with no lives! I thought you knew that?!”

“I don’t even know what I do know, anymore,” Y/N shakes her head at him.

“I. Love. You.” Ashton punctuates carefully, looking at her straight in the eyes. “Isn’t that enough?”

She cracks a broken smile, “D'you know something?” She asks rhetorically and Ashton doesn’t even get a chance to respond before she’s talking again, “You haven’t even denied that you’ve got nothing more than friendship going on with the fucking perfect Gemma fucking Styles. So can you really blame me for being upset?” She asks quietly, shaking her head then she’s running her fingers through her hair and walking away from him.

“Y/N – ”

“I need a walk,” she cuts him off.

Ashton opens his mouth to say something, about to get up and follow her but she shakes her head, taking in a deep breath. “Alone. Lock the door when you leave,” she says quietly and then she’s stepping out of the house, stuffing a pair of house keys into the pockets of her trousers.

And the drummer with a bandage around his wrist, bandana around his head, has his eyes transfixed on the wooden door that falls shut, with lips parted and the most heartbroken facial expression present on his handsome face. Because she’s just walked out on him and that has never happened before. And suddenly it feels like everything’s caving in around him and he knows it’s dumb to be this heartbroken over a little disagreement because it couldn’t even be called an argument, let alone a fight – but he can’t help it because he is in love with Y/N and if he loses her over something as stupid as what had just happened – he’ll never be able to figure out what to do with himself.

—

“Hey, it’s Y/N, I clearly can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message. I’ll get back to you when I can. Maybe." Beep.

Ashton sighs, "Hey. Y/N… Please,” his voice cracks. “Pick up the phone. It’s been too long since I’ve last heard your voice and it hurts. I’m sorry – about what happened the other day. I didn’t mean to, you know, laugh. I just – I can’t help it because I am so in love with you and you’ve literally got nothing to worry about, especially not with Gem. She’s one of my close mates, baby. That’s all we are, and all we’ll ever be. All we ever talk about is you. How you make me feel so fucking happy, how I miss you so much when we’re not together, how I’d steal all the stars in the sky for you if you asked me to. I am so in love with you, it’s terrifying me, but at the same time: I really fucking like it. I just, – ” he sighs again. “– please, baby. I miss you. I’ve come over and you’re not there, I call and text and you don’t respond. I just need to hear your voice, see your voice, something, anything. I’d never forgive myself if something’s happened to you because of me. Please… just…. call me back. Tell me you still love me. Tell me we’re not done because I was an idiot.”

He gulps, tugging at his hair. A knock on the door to his bedroom makes him look up and Calum’s smiling sympathetically at him. Ashton pulls the weakest grin he can managed, holding up a finger before he’s throwing his head back down onto the pillow and then turning his attention back to the torn hemming of the t-shirt he’s got on. “I love you. To the stars and above.” Then he's clicking the phone call shut and breathing out another sigh before he turns his attention back to the Kiwi boy, propping himself up on his elbow with a weak smile.

“You alright?”

“Depends, really,” the elder shrugs, “Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?”

Calum shrugs a shoulder, too. “Lie to me first, so I can figure out what to do to bring my Ashton back to normal,” he coos in a falsetto, probably in hopes that it’ll make Ashton smile. It doesn’t. He just drops his bent elbow so that he’s laying on his back on his bed again. Calum frowns, shoulders sagging slightly as he takes Ashton’s appearance in.

Ashton takes in a deep breath, slowly pulling himself into a sitting position, then he’s forcing his lips into the most fake grin that Calum has ever seen on him that it actually hurts to look at, because Ashton’s smile is one of the best things about him. Seeing him have to fake one with so much sadness behind it… That wasn’t right. Made anyone feel like shit just by looking at it.

“I'm great.”

“Okay, that was… terrible,” Calum’s frown deepens as he shakes his head, stepping further into the elder’s bedroom, sitting on the bed. “Truth?”

Ashton’s smile fell from his face as quickly as it had come. He shakes his head, running his hands through his hair and pushing it away from his face. “Not great. I feel like shit because she hasn’t called me back and I’ve apologised and gone to her house and – I – ” he sighs again, “Not great, Cal. I’m not great.”

Calum puts his arm around the elder, giving him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “She’ll come 'round, mate,” he smiles at the elder. “Hasn’t been that long, yeah?”

“It’s been a week, Cal. One fucking week,” Ashton grins humourlessly at the dark-haired boy before he drops it and brings his hands up to his face.

“I – ” Calum starts then he cuts himself off abruptly. Ashton looks up, a questioning look on his face, and Calum only shakes his head in response. “S'nothing.”

“I just – ” he starts unsurely before he shakes his head. “Don’t you think that Y/N’s overreacting?” He asks hesitantly. “I mean – like, you didn’t do jack shit with Gemma, yeah? And I assume you’ve told her that, so why’s she still mad at you? Doesn’t her, like, overreacting kind of make it, like, that she doesn’t trust you…?”

Ashton looks at the younger thoughtfully. He’s kind of right, but in a way – he’s really wrong, too. Because Ashton knew why Y/N was still upset with him. It was because there were pictures after pictures of him and Gemma, and (like she’d said) he hadn’t done anything to promise her that there really was nothing but friendship between the pair that night. It also didn’t help that someone had filmed a video of him hugging a fan and then kissing her on the cheek – only he kissed the cheek that was away from the camera and the camera was also kind of diagonally behind the fan he was hugging. Add in the fact that the fan had hair coloured just like how Gemma’s was – it was completely reasonable.

And Ashton would give her as much space as she needed, as long as she came back to him. But he was worried now, because he was afraid that Y/N was beginning close herself off. He didn’t want that. He still loves her, of course he does. And he knows that Y/N still loves him, because if she didn’t then she wouldn’t get as upset as she’d gotten over the stupid rumours that she’d never believe otherwise. He still needs the reassurance that she does, though. He needs her to say it or he just might fall apart.

But there’s also the pessimistic part of him that’s telling him Y/N’s already moved on and doesn’t love him anymore, that’s why she’s ignoring him. That part of him, no matter how hard he tries to shut it down, somehow manages to always come out on top – and he ends up telling himself that she wasn’t his anymore because he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t around enough, wasn’t talented enough, wasn’t good-looking enough, wasn’t as good of a singer as the others were, wasn’t as important to her as she was is to him.

“I love her,” Ashton says softly, so softly, his voice cracking. “I love her, so much, and you might be right, but… I – you don’t get it, Cal.”

“Then explain it to me, mate.”

“Okay, she’s like – the moon, yeah? Not the sun, because the sun’s all happy rays and shit. Y/N says I’m the sun. She’s like the moon. She says she’s like the moon because she’s hidden and quiet and stuff, and nobody ever, like, pays attention to her and she likes that. But I think she’s the moon because she’s so, so beautiful, and not everyone can appreciate the beauty of the moon because they’re all to busy paying more attention to the sun than they are the moon. The moon is bright, and it gives you light in the darkest of nights, and it’s so beautiful that you can’t help but stare when you look at it, finally notice it. That’s… That’s her. That’s Y/N. Her eyes are so bright, she brings light to my darkest of days and she is so beautiful that all I want to ever do is just look at her and wonder how the fuck did someone like me end up with someone like her.”

Calum licks his lips, looking at Ashton – the elder having thrown his body back so that his legs are dangling off of the side of the bed but his back’s flat on the mattress. “So what’re you gonna do about it?”

Ashton darts his eyes to his mate, “Wait,” he shrugs. “There’s nothing I can do except for wait and hope and pray to any God that’ll listen that she still loves me because, fuck, I can’t see myself ever unloving her. Ever.